Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/807

BRO residence at Ryde, in the Isle of Wight. His circumstances were such as to render him independent of medical practice, and he devoted his attention to natural science, more especially to botany. In 1830 he became a fellow of the Linnæan Society. He examined the flora of Hampshire, and especially that of the Isle of Wight, and he contributed many papers on the subject to the Phytologist. His researches into the flora of the Isle of Wight were carried on with assiduity and vigour. In 1842 he botanized in the south and west of Ireland, and in 1844 he went to the West Indies, and passed six months in Trinidad and Jamaica. In 1846 he spent a year in Canada and the United States. In September, 1850, he left England for Egypt, and ascended the Nile as far as Khartoum, returning to Cairo after an absence of seven months. He then proceeded to Syria, and visited Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine. On his arrival at Damascus, he was seized with typhus fever, and he died on the 9th October, 1851, at the age of fifty-one. Since his death Sir William Hooker and Dr. Bell Salter have edited his "Flora Vectensis, or Botany of the Isle of Wight," which is accompanied by a botanico-typographical map of the island. His letters from Syria have also been printed.—J. H. B.  BROMHEAD,, the second baronet of the family, was born in Dublin on 26th March, 1789, and succeeded to the title on the death of his father in 1822. He was a member of Gonville and Caius college, and was called to the bar in 1813. He has published various sketches of natural classification, both botanical and zoological. He devoted attention to ecclesiastical architecture. He was a master of arts, and a fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, and of the Turin Society. For some years he was afflicted with blindness. He died at Thurlby Hall, Newark, in Lincolnshire, on 14th March, 1855, at the age of sixty-six. Within a few weeks of his death he distributed a corrected edition of his views of classification.—J. H. B.  BROMLEY,, was born in 1530 at Bromley, Shropshire, where his ancestors, bearing the same name, had resided through many generations. He became a student of the inner temple, where he was distinguished for good conduct and assiduity. His rise to eminence at the bar was rapid. In 1566 he was appointed recorder of London and in 1570, solicitor-general, through the aid of Sir Nicholas Bacon, then lord-keeper of the privy seal, on whose demise in 1579, he succeeded to that high office, with the title of lord chancellor. His pliant disposition and versatile talent rendered him a fitting instrument in the hands of a despotic queen, for working out her vindictive designs against the hapless Mary queen of Scots, and her warm adherent the duke of Norfolk, and others who incurred Elizabeth's displeasure. But for this, there would probably have been little in the career of Bromley to save from oblivion his somewhat unhallowed memory. In his character of solicitor-general, he made his first official appearance on the trial of Norfolk for high treason, displaying unmitigated zeal to procure the duke's conviction. Norfolk fell a victim to the charge chiefly on account of the warmth with which he had espoused the cause of Mary. After his death, Bromley was deputed, with several others, to obtain an audience and negotiate with her, but his eloquence proved unavailing. Mary firmly refused to acquiesce in anything which could peril the independence of Scotland, tarnish the honour of her race, or compromise the interests of her religion. Doubt and hesitation marked the counsels of Elizabeth's advisers. Whilst the earl of Leicester recommended poison as the safer mode of disposing of the object of royal jealousy, Burghley, supported by the lord chancellor, Bromley, thought it better to proceed by parliamentary sanction, and a mock court of justice. In the parliament, summoned in November, 1585, Bromley broached the subject in his opening speech, and a bill was brought in and carried for the trial of Mary. The lord chancellor and forty-five others, consisting of peers, privy councillors, and judges, were constituted a court for the purpose, and Bromley, at the head of these commissioners, proceeded to Fotheringay, to take command of the castle in which the royal captive was incarcerated. The base stratagems by which she was at last inveigled into an acknowledgment of their jurisdiction, need not here be detailed. After the execution of her rival, although chiefly of Bromley's devising, Elizabeth, true to the hypocritical part she had resolved to play, assumed an air of indignant resentment against the very tools who had furthered her views, and so well did she dissemble that soon Bromley himself, apprehensive of consequences, suffered so much from alarm and agitation that he fell suddenly ill, took to his bed, and within six weeks after Mary's death, Bromley was no more. He died on the 12th of April, 1587, and was buried with much pomp at Westminster abbey, where a splendid monument was raised to his memory. As a lawyer he was far above mediocrity. As an equity judge he gave such general satisfaction that no unfavourable comparisons appear to have been drawn between him and his distinguished predecessor, Sir Nicholas Bacon; whilst his loss was long deplored in the legal arena of Westminster hall.—F. J. H.  BROMPTON,, a Cistercian monk, abbot of Jorevall or Jerevall in Richmondshire. The "Chronicon," which goes under his name, appears to have been procured for his monastery by the abbot, but not, as is sometimes asserted, written by him. It is an account of the years 588-1198, beginning with the arrival of Augustine the monk, and ending with the death of Richard I., and will be found in the Decem Script. Hist. Angliæ, London, 1652, fol.—J. S., G.  BROMPTON,, an English artist, a pupil of poor, classical, red-nosed Wilson. In Italy he studied under Mengs. He accompanied Lord Northampton, the English ambassador, to Venice, and painted the portraits of the duke of York and many of our nobility. In 1767 he returned and exhibited his pictures at rooms in Spring Gardens. Finding no encouragement, he went to St. Petersburg, and there died in 1790—a bitter life and a sorry end.—W. T.  BROMS,, a Swedish poet and domestic chaplain. Born in 1673; died in 1722.—M. H.  BRONCHORST,, an early water-colour painter, born at Leyden in 1648. He seems to have been self-instructed and a discoverer. He painted birds and animals of all kinds, wild and free, after nature, with force and expression. He became a piece of still life in 1723.—W. T.  * BRONGNIART,, a distinguished French botanist, son of Alexander Brongniart, an eminent chemist and geologist, was born at Paris on 14th January, 1801. He became doctor of medicine in 1826, and devoted his special attention to botany. His name is celebrated in connection with fossil botany, and he has published one of the ablest works on this subject. In 1834 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, and he succeeded Desfontaines as professor of botany in the Jardin des Plantes. He has published many valuable botanical works, and has contributed important articles to scientific journals, and to the Transactions of societies. Among his other works may be noticed a "History and Classification of Fossil Plants;" "Classification of Fungi;" "Memoir on the Rhamneæ;" "Remarks on the Development of the Embryo, and on the Structure and Functions of Leaves;" "Enumeration of Plants cultivated in the Botanic Garden at Paris;" "Description of the Phanerogamous Plants of Captain Duperrey's Voyage round the World."—J. H. B. <section end="807H" /> <section begin="807I" />BRONGNIART,, son of a Paris physician, born February 15, 1739; died June 7, 1813. His family wished him to cultivate the science of medicine, but he soon abandoned it for that of architecture. In 1773 he began to construct the edifices which have placed him in the first rank of his countrymen. The military school, the hotel of the minister of foreign affairs, and a vast number of public buildings, avenues, &c., in the French capital, attest his skill. His last and greatest work was the beautiful Bourse, which was not completed until after his death.—T. J. <section end="807I" /> <section begin="807J" />BRONIKOWSKI. , a German novelist, born in 1783; died in 1834; author of a history of Poland, "Poland in the Eleventh Century," and "Poland in the Seventeenth Century."—J. S., G. <section end="807J" /> <section begin="807Zcontin" />BRONKHORST,, a Utrecht painter, born in 1603. He was apprenticed to John Verburg, a glass painter, and afterwards studied in Brabant under Peter Mattys. He returned home, though much employed, still disgusted with his own results. Meeting at this juncture with Poelemberg, he devoted himself bravely but foolishly, at the thirty-sixth year of his age, to the imitation of a second-rate man—a very miserable ambition. Forgetting his flower-leaf windows in Amsterdam churches, he became renowned for neatness and high finish, and he also etched some of his own and his master's landscapes. The new church at Amsterdam, in whose choir are Bronkhorst's windows, displays also on the folding doors of its organ an "Anointing of <section end="807Zcontin" />